This is Ghost and her existence was classified for 4 years.
Despite her looks, she is not a catamaran. Ghost is a boat attached to two giant submarines that,
for the most part, fly underwater … through air. But why the US Government slapped secrecy
orders on this privately built boat, calling it dangerous, to the extent that they didn’t even
want allied countries to have her, and how this boat can fly underwater, is Not What You Think.
The Ghost was built privately. In fact, the boat’s inventor, Greg Sancoff, spent $5 million
dollars of his own money to hire engineers and naval experts to make the Ghost project happen.
Of course the idea was to eventually market it to the US military,
but why did Sancoff think that the US Navy would be interested in his invention?
On October 12th, 2000, while docked at the port of Aden, in Yemen, USS Cole was hit by a small boat
that was loaded with explosives and piloted by two terrorists. The explosion from the suicide attack
created a 40-foot wide hole near the waterline and severely damaged the 1-billion dollar ship.
17 American sailors lost their lives and 40 other crew members were injured.
In the aftermath of the attack, Greg Sancoff started wondering about a gunship, which could
neutralize this type of threat. Furthermore, Sancoff came across a US Navy wargame report
called “Juliet”, which simulated the US Navy attacking a force of small high-speed boats.
The simulation estimated the US Navy suffering about 20,000 casualties in two days.
This motivated Sancoff to start a new company, Juliet Marine Systems, named after the report
itself, and the work began on a prototype, which would eventually become the Ghost.
The threat of small boats that could disable much larger warships is not a new idea. Small
torpedo boats of the early 20th century did exactly that to the battleships.
Until 2011, the Ghost project was kept a secret. All the testing was happening
at night. But on August 11, 2011, the US Navy removed the secrecy orders and some
$22 million dollars of private money later, the Ghost made its first public appearance.
A striking feature of this boat is stealth. The Ghost has a very low radar cross section for its
size, meaning that most larger ships won’t pick her up on their radars. And while this
makes Ghost a great candidate for reconnaissance operations, her primary mission is fleet defense.
A squadron of Ghost-like craft could protect a flotilla of larger warships
near shore against smaller maritime threats, be it terrorist boats or Unmanned Maritime Systems.
The Ghost can be equipped with a M197 20mm rotary cannon, as well as missiles like the
Griffin or Advanced Precision Kill Weapon System rockets. Aside from fleet defense, the vessel can
also conduct anti-submarine warfare, piracy protection and mine countermeasures, plus it
has a variety of sensors for reconnaissance purposes. Ghost can also carry 18 Navy Seals,
making for a great assault vehicle. That said, there was also plenty of criticism.
When the Ghost was made public, critics immediately started pointing out that the
vessel doesn’t have the range or logistics to withstand blue water operations, at least
not without some sort of mothership. While it is worth noting that this boat can fit inside
the well deck of various amphibious assault ships, and even be transported inside a C-17 cargo plane,
the Ghost was developed to operate in very specific geographical areas. Which brings
up the question: aside from stealth, what makes the Ghost superior to traditional patrol boats?
Small patrol boats are quite unstable in high seas, moving up and down and side to
side with the motion of the waves. This makes it incredibly difficult to drink a cup of coffee,
or launch any sort of weapons from patrol boats during higher sea states. The solution to that
problem is using a ship design called SWATH, which stands for Small Waterplane Area Twin Hull.
SWATH ships are different from Catamarans in that they are less susceptible to wave
motion due to their narrow waterline. The twin hulls that provide the bulk of the
displacement are completely submerged, and this reduces the effects of wave action.
The Ghost is effectively a boat that rides on two fins, attached to two submarines which have 22
different underwater control surfaces. This makes for a complex design since all of the machinery,
such as 2 gas turbine engines, two giant 800 gallon fuel bladders and
propellers have to be located inside the 62-foot submarine shaped pontoons.
But on the plus side, having the propulsion system underwater increases survivability.
Since SWATH rides below the water, the water impacts are greatly diminished, because water
only hits the very sharp struts of the vessel, which produce negligible stability issues.
This results in an incredibly smooth ride. You could drink coffee in 6 foot waves with
no problem. The Ghost can handle waves up to 10 feet high with a maximum range of 500 miles.
But there was a little problem.
Propellers are typically placed aft of a boat, which push the vessel forward. But this would
have created structural problems for the Ghost. So the propellers were instead placed in the front,
effectively pulling the boat forward. But this unusual propeller placement created a
revolutionary advantage: reducing drag with the help of cavitation.
There are two ways to boil water. You could increase the temperature,
or you could reduce the surrounding pressure. Either method generates bubbles. Cavitation,
simply put, is the formation of bubbles on the propeller. When a propeller spins, it produces
areas of lower pressure around its blades, causing the water to boil in the ambient temperature.
This creates a trail of bubbles. What’s inside the bubbles is not air. It’s water vapor.
Now, if the propeller is placed in the back of the boat, these bubbles are simply exhausted.
But if you put the propellers in front of the vessel, just like it was done on the Ghost,
they form underwater gas tunnels around the giant pontoons, which create 900 times
less hull friction than if they were just moving through water. This gives the Ghost
superior efficiency with a top speed of 40 knots, making it the fastest SWATH ship on the planet.
However there are potential drawbacks to placing a propeller in the front of the boat, because if
the boat hits something head on, the boat is dead in water. Not to mention hitting any fish nets,
or floating debris in the water. As a side note, hydrofoils were faster and they have been
around for a long time. But they had a similar issue, with foils getting damaged frequently.
Juliet Marine Systems were even planning on designing future
iterations of the Ghost to reach a speed of 70 knots. Spoiler alert,
the whole company went under, because the US military was not interested. But why?
According to Jay Cohen, a retired US Navy rear admiral and Juliet Marine Systems advisor, it was
Back in 2009, Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency or DARPA,
offered a contract to Juliet Marine Systems in exchange for all its patent rights. But Sancoff
didn’t want to lose his intellectual property because he saw commercial value in civilian
applications of his patents. Instead the Ghost was offered to the US Navy at a $10-million price tag.
The US Navy’s initial interest in the vessel eventually faded away for a variety of reasons.
One reason was that they preferred large-hull blue water ships that were also capable of
in-shore operations, instead of a small craft that could only perform inshore missions.
But the Navy was also quite apprehensive about working with new technologies,
let alone startups, especially after the fiascos with Zumvalt and the Littoral Combat Ships.
The Navy wasn’t interested in Juliet’s scaled-up 150-foot version of the Ghost either.
After Sancoff rejected the offer from DARPA, the US Government slammed secrecy orders over
four patents which prevented Juliet Marine Systems from publicizing its technology. The secrecy order
was recommended by the Office of Naval Research which called the Ghost technology “dangerous”.
The secrecy orders were lifted and reinstated multiple times.
According to Sancoff, he believed that the US government simply wanted
him to go out of business so no other countries could have his technology.
In 2014, the US Department of State permitted foreign military sales discussions with South
Korea, but prior to any meetings, Juliet Marine Systems had to file paperwork with the state
department, which would in turn run it by the US Navy. The meetings were approved, but there were
plenty of caveats including things that prevented the company from talking to foreign buyers about
the Ghost boat or its supercavitating hull technology. It was a catch 22.
Having such business challenges, in 2016, Juliet Marine Systems was forced to lay
off 17 of its 20 employees, and then go to court against the US government. In 2021,
the Ghost was listed for sale for a bargain price of $2 million dollars. Currently the Ghost is
permanently located on display in Albacore park next to USS Albacore in Portsmouth, New Hampshire.
It’s ironic how history repeats itself. In the early 20th century,
the invention of torpedoes allowed small boats to launch a weapon which could
cripple much larger cruisers and battleships. In response, a new class of ships was invented;
torpedo boat destroyers, whose mission was to haunt torpedo boats.
Over time, the Destroyers got larger and heavier, to the point that now, they need a small and fast
boat to protect them from attack boats and unmanned maritime systems. So it's likely just
a matter of time before boats like the Ghost become part of many Navies around the world.